ARSENAL ARE ALWAYS ON THE DEFENCE!

Seeing Oliver Holt’s headline in his Daily Mail article following our match with Bayern Munich was bewildering. Arsenal, up against one the giants of European football, gave a good account of themselves and have every chance of winning the second leg. Yet it attracted the headline ‘Arsenal look like paupers in rags next to Euro aristocrats.’  It’s a spiteful headline with absolutely no justification. It reveals the authors total disregard for Arsenal football club. You can almost feel the stress being released as he takes comfort from typing these words with gritted teeth after no doubt being consumed in irritation on the form Arsenal have been in for so long. And yet it came as no surprise. For some reason Arsenal are always on the receiving end of this nature of journalism. They only have to lose a couple of games in a row and Arsenal are in crisis, broken cannons appear, no other team have had this treatment to their badge. I would not like to imagine the daily hammering we would be receiving if we were having Chelsea’s or even Man Utd’s season.

Arsenal are always finding themselves on the defence from all angles!

I have been enjoying recapturing my youth recently by watching ‘The Big Match revisited’. Good old Brian Moore presenting football from the 70’s and 80’s played on muddy pitches, tackles flying in from all angles and not a dive or a player holding their head after a collision that clearly did not happen.

At some stage the dark arts seeped into the English game, and we are where we are right now. Don’t get me wrong, there has always been gamesmanship and cheating, I am not looking back with total rose-tinted glasses. I was in the North Bank with a perfect view of Alan Sunderland punching the ball into the net to secure a 1-0 win over Liverpool in days when beating the best team in the country since what appeared to be forever was just unthinkable. There just was not 100’s of cameras or VAR to capture it.

Now diving has been described as part of the game, the deliberate foul to stop another player is a ‘tactical foul’ and is ‘taking one for the team’.

This is all very well, however whenever diving is discussed one ‘dive’ will always come up in discussion – Pires. Every week, every game, players are rolling around trying to ‘earn’ a penalty or produce a card for an opposing player. Many times, especially when Harry Kane is involved, they will be described as ‘being Clever’. And yet people will still go back 20 years to single out Pires. A few years later another Arsenal player involved in a ‘diving’ allegation resulted in legal action being threatened and the incident even being spoken about in Parliament!  Eduardo had gone down on a challenge from a Celtic player in a Champions League qualifier in an Arsenal shirt. It appears that this fact is very key! As for taking one for the team, to date I can only remember one player being sent off for this. A certain Granit Xhaka who played for Arsenal!

In 2004 a 29-year-old Paul Scholes announced that he no longer wished to play for England. He was at the peak of his career and continued playing for Manchester United until 2011. He cited that he wished to concentrate on his family and his domestic career. He also suggested that he was behind Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard in the England set up. The overwhelming reaction from all corners of the media was positive and total acceptance.

Move on 20 years and a player was involved in some kind of incident whilst in the England camp during the last World Cup leading to his withdrawal. Ben White has remained tight lipped about the exact circumstances, however when Southgate spoke at a recent press conference, he took it upon himself to tell the worlds media that White did not wish to be considered for England whilst denying that there had ever been an issue between White and Steve Holland. This was the first chink of light on what had occurred in Qatar, no one had even mentioned Holland before. It was then revealed by media sources that Southgate was not being truthful, and in fact an exchange between these two parties was exactly the reason for White returning home!

So, we have a player who now being uncomfortable with the England management has decided to concentrate on his domestic team and probably frustrated that he was behind a couple of players anyway. The similarities between him and Scholes ends there. White has been called an absolute disgrace! He has ‘turned his back’ on his country. Weeks later and the morality of White’s decision is still being raised.

Arsenal were fantastic last season, challenging for the title against a team that ended up ‘winning’ everything. A young exciting team led by a young enthusiastic manager playing with such joy and creating incredibly exciting moments. Any other team would have been praised to the hilt for what they were producing, instead the critics were everywhere. They are celebrating too much, the manager should be standing within his technical area, they have bottled it.

This season Arteta decided that he was going to promote Raya for Ramsdale. This kind of decision has been made since football began. Who remembers the great Shilton / Clemence debate?  Not a popular one with Arsenal fans who had fallen in love with Ramsdale since his arrival, but the reaction by the media was mind-blowing! Again, discussed for weeks by incredulous pundits, cameras fixed on Ramsdale ready to catch any emotion he may release during games. Arteta was not being praised for being a strong manager but instead having his integrity and judgement questioned. Only after the penalty shoot-out against Porto has the noise subsided.

For a few years now Arsenal have been subjected to embarrassing defeats away to Manchester City, even last season despite the huge improvement we suffered there. Now, after already beating them twice this season we turned up with new vigour. Up to now we have always been informed of the huge squad Manchester City have, the ability to put out two teams good enough to win the league. However, apparently as they were missing two players and their goalkeeper it was now a green light for Arsenal to just turn up and rip them apart. Of course, this is not what happened. Manchester City raised their game and Arsenal were forced on the back foot however defended incredibly and prevented Manchester City from scoring at home for the first time since 2021 – in ALL competitions! This was an amazing feat! There were a few voices of praise, no less than that from Gary Neville. However, the flack did not take long! Negative boring Arsenal! No bottle! No backbone! How are you going to win a league by not going for it? The two following home games Manchester City have been involved have resulted in 4-1 and 5-1 victories!

I could go on, and I am sure some may accuse me of being somewhat paranoid and needing a tin hat.  The great George Graham is quoted as saying ‘It’s fine that people hate us, it’s part of our history’. There is no rhyme or reason for it and it will always baffle me, I just hope we continue to upset our critics by maintaining our form. The future certainly looks bright for ‘The Arsenal’, the only team that is ever addressed in this manner. Maybe that is why they are so upset with the club? Jealousy is a terrible thing.